Eve may have turned Villanelle in to the authorities in last week’s shocking episode of “Killing Eve,” but even if Carolyn wasn’t off trying to track down who was responsible for the death of her son, Kenny, the move likely wouldn’t have been a blip on her radar.
“The astonishing thing about Carolyn as a character, which I think is brilliantly written, is Carolyn is not affected particularly by Eve or by Villanelle,” actress Fiona Shaw, who plays the spy, told TheWrap when discussing the fourth and final season of the series. “She’s not threatened by Villanelle. So what the two of them do to each other, or at each other, or on behalf of each other is not of great concern to Carolyn. She knows that Villanelle is behind certain crimes, but there are 10 other people behind huge crimes that Carolyn is also also dealing with. … She is dealing with a much bigger universe than this. This is a subplot in Carolyn’s life.”
Indeed, Season 4 of the BBC America show has seen Carolyn on quite the solo journey. After the events of Season 3, which saw Carolyn kill Paul, she found herself beginning the show’s final run of episodes off on a Baelleric island – as punishment.
“She’s sort of kicked out of MI:6 at the end of the third series because, well, she did kill somebody,” Shaw said. “She obviously escaped jail due to her [MI:6 role]. She’d probably find an excuse or a way of avoiding an average thing like a court case. I mean, that just doesn’t happen because there’s a way of them mopping up the world, but she is punished by MI:6 by sort of being kicked out or kicked upstairs. She’s sent on a minor diplomatic role to Mallorca. … And you can tell that she won’t stay there long.”
In recent episodes, Carolyn, in her quest to find out what really happened to her son (as Konstantin’s admission last season that he took Kenny onto the roof to talk, wasn’t sufficient), she’s gone rogue. Saddling up with people who were once her spy-world enemies has set a whole new game for the former MI:6 officer.
“That was very hard to play, that she no longer has at the end of a phone anyone she wants to talk to, she no longer has the power of MI:6 to report crimes,” Shaw said of Carolyn’s “maverick” turn. “She’s on her own and is welcomed weirdly, by people who are normally her enemy and so she begins to compromise herself and betray the people who she used to work for. And that is very much I think the world of the spy world where morality can shift. But she’s doing it in her mind for a higher reason – to find out [about] Kenny. But actually, of course, she’s damaging her own morality as she does it. And I think that’s a very interesting story.”
Sunday night’s episode will follow Carolyn as she heads to Cuba to speak with one of The 12, who survived an attempted assassination, and is clinging to life while in custody.
“It’s a lot less glamorous, isn’t it, being out in the field? And you’re meeting people who are really unattractive members of society, or whatever society they’re part of,” Shaw said. “Terrible things happen for her. She gets knocked on the head. I mean, lots of things happen to her. She doesn’t have a very comfortable time. And I don’t think she enjoys it and maybe she’s becoming more of a lost soul.
“I don’t analyze those things,” Shaw continued of approaching her character’s plot twists as an actress. “I just try and see how she would cope with them. But I think it’s very brave of the writers to take away her gorgeous clothes and her gorgeous life and put her somewhere that is neither comfortable nor particularly glamorous and she’s going to try and cope, so that’s what happens.”
“Killing Eve” Season 4 continues Sunday nights on BBC America.